Bones

Brian Price, once a wrecking ball on UCLA's defensive line, has beaten long odds to return to the NFL after two off-season surgeries aimed at keeping his hamstrings attached to his pelvis, rather than breaking loose and coiling down the backs of his thighs. For Price, who will start at defensive tackle Sunday for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his excruciating recovery was a 10-step process. Meaning just two months ago, he could run only 10 steps. "You have these doubts in your head at times," said Price, a second-round pick of the Buccaneers in 2010 who, because of his congenitally malformed pelvis, spent the last half of his rookie season on injured reserve.

Brad Pitt has brought his new movie "Killing Them Softly" to the Cannes Film Festival, and as The Times reported Tuesday morning, he and the film's director had an anti-capitalist message (or, at least, a message aimed against capitalism as recently practiced in the U.S.) to go along with it.  And that message is coming from the mouth of the man who is the new face of Chanel No. 5 -- a job for which Pitt reportedly will receive seven figures.

If it had not caught the attention of a handful of important readers, Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones" would most likely have quietly faded into obscurity; many worthy books do. Now, however, this novel about a poor Mississippi family in the weeks leading up to 2005's Hurricane Katrina has a prominent place in bookstores and boasts the gold medallion that comes with winning the 2011 National Book Award. Book awards are marvelously idiosyncratic. While major film and music awards are based on the votes of a large group - meaning there is a general consensus or popularity - book awards are frequently selected by just a few people.

Nobody thought much about the locked metal cabinet in the medical school at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. It was another forgotten fixture in the anatomy department - until a researcher last year found seven skulls with yellowing labels indicating the remains were those of Native Americans from California's Central Coast. Earlier this month, the skulls and several bone fragments were boxed and gingerly placed aboard a jet to LAX at London's Heathrow Airport.

Nobody thought much about the locked metal cabinet in the medical school at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. It was another forgotten fixture in the anatomy department - until a researcher last year found seven skulls with yellowing labels indicating the remains were those of Native Americans from California's Central Coast. Earlier this month, the skulls and several bone fragments were boxed and gingerly placed aboard a jet to LAX at London's Heathrow Airport.

Some good buys for your health and your pocketbook: Buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season. Buy frozen otherwise. Frozen is cheaper and may even be better for you than fresh. That's because produce is usually frozen at its ripest, which is usually when it maxes out in nutrient content too. Some nutrients do break down or leach out in the freezing process, but most make it through.

Jesmyn Ward was struggling. Despite two master's degrees and five years of work experience, her job situation was difficult: She commuted an hour each way to a low-paying college teaching job. In her writing career, things were even worse. She sent out stories and got back rejection letters. Her agent tried and failed, and tried and failed again, to sell her book. "I almost gave up," Ward says. In the spring of 2008, she thought, "Maybe I should stop this. Maybe I should just quit and do something that would give me a steady, higher paycheck, like nursing.

If you were asked to name a few foods that promote healthy bones, you'd probably list dairy products for their bone-building calcium and vitamin D. It's a lot less likely that prunes, onions and fermented soybeans would come to mind. In fact, it has been known for some time that a high intake of fruits and vegetables helps keep bones strong and prevents fractures as people age. Now nutrition scientists are trying to pinpoint the bioactive compounds in produce that appear to have this effect.

The Grateful Dead bought eight, Knotts Berry Farm ordered several. Doctors, medical schools, nursing schools, universities, research labs, high schools, anatomists, attorneys, physical therapists, athletic trainers and the entertainment industry buy them. All have purchased authentic plastic reproductions of life-sized human skeletons from Medical Plastics Laboratory, a life-sized plastic human skeleton factory, in existence 39 years in this Texas town 110 miles south of Ft. Worth.

One hundred "bones" is 100 bucks, but 100 "Bones" is the number of episodes that the forensics drama hits this week. Congratulations to series stars David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel and all of the cast and crew. (Fox, 8 p.m. Thu.)

Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno, head of the six-county Los Angeles diocese, has been diagnosed with leukemia and is undergoing aggressive treatment to fight the disease. The 65-year-old bishop said in an open letter that he had been suffering from what he thought was a bout of pneumonia since March. He underwent further tests after treatment failed to cure the "nagging problem. " Doctors at Good Samaritan Hospital discovered that Bruno had acute monocytic leukemia, a form of blood cancer.

Jesmyn Ward was struggling. Despite two master's degrees and five years of work experience, her job situation was difficult: She commuted an hour each way to a low-paying college teaching job. In her writing career, things were even worse. She sent out stories and got back rejection letters. Her agent tried and failed, and tried and failed again, to sell her book. "I almost gave up," Ward says. In the spring of 2008, she thought, "Maybe I should stop this. Maybe I should just quit and do something that would give me a steady, higher paycheck, like nursing.

Flame-bearing Prometheus may have visited humans earlier than we thought. An analysis of charred bones and plant ash in sediment from a South African cave suggests that Homo erectus was wielding fire a million years ago — and perhaps even cooking with it, according to a study released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings present the earliest clear evidence of such use of fire, experts said. The ability to control fire marks an evolutionary turning point: It would have kept our ancient relatives warm in unforgiving climes and allowed them to cook their food, releasing trapped nutrients and getting more caloric bang per bite.

The curator of the Catalina Island Museum opened the door to a musty backroom a few weeks ago hoping to find material for an upcoming exhibit on the World War II era. Closing the door behind him, he trudged down a narrow aisle lined with storage boxes and bins filled with gray photocopies of old letters, civic records, celebrity kitsch -- and dust. "No luck," curator John Boraggina muttered. But as he made his way to a back corner, he noticed another row of boxes. He carried the largest to a table, blew off the dust and lifted the lid. Inside were leather-bound journals and yellowing photographs showing freshly unearthed skeletons lying on their backs or sides, or curled as if in sleep.

While the recent trend among most airlines is to introduce higher-fare seats with extra legroom and no baggage fees, Delta Air Lines is moving in the other direction. The nation's largest carrier announced the addition of “basic economy” seating, the airline's lowest-fare offer. The ultra-low-cost seats started in mid-March and are only offered at select routes, primarily Detroit to the Florida cities of Fort Myers, Orlando, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. The basic economy seats are about $12 to $20 cheaper than regular economy seats but the tickets are nonrefundable and no cancellations or changes will be allowed once the tickets are purchased.

A federal appeals court Tuesday unanimously rejected a request from the Obama administration to reconsider a ruling that bone marrow donors can be compensated for providing the life-saving stem cells from their blood. None of the 25 active judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the petition by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., asking for the full court to review a December ruling that the government fears could lead to money influencing donation decisions. The Dec. 1 ruling by a three-judge panel redefined bone marrow cells harvested from a donor's bloodstream as blood parts, not organ parts.

Near the end of "The Leopard," Giuseppe di Lampedusa's 1958 novel about the crumbling Sicilian aristocracy, a priest visits three spinsters to assess the holy relics in the family's private family chapel. The priest determines that, out of all the various bits of bone and other strange objects, some are authentic and should be kept. The rest are thrown away. If author Charles Freeman had been along on that visit, he would have insisted, "Don't throw anything away! Keep everything!"

Bones from six bodies have been uncovered in the desert west of Albuquerque during the last two weeks, and police said Tuesday that they were probably put there by one person. As detectives shore up their list of suspects, the list of possible victims is growing to include a group of 16 prostitutes who went missing from Albuquerque between 2001 and 2006, and others reported missing from various parts of the state.

Vitamin D may be helpful in protecting highly active pre-teen and teen girls, such as those who play sports, from stress fractures, researchers reported Monday. The study was surprising because calcium has long been considered the nutrient most vital to bone health in children. But, in developing children, vitamin D intake may matter more. Researchers analyzed data from 6,721 girls ages 9 to 15 at the start of the study. The girls' intake of calcium, vitamin D and dairy products was recorded along with stress fractures, which are common sports-related injuries.

A compound that looked to be a possible wonder drug for obesity and metabolic disease, such as diabetes, may not make it to store shelves. Research published this week shows the hormone, called fibroblast growth factor 21, causes bone loss while it burns fat. The finding is yet another setback in the difficult field of drug development aimed at the country's obesity epidemic. Two studies, one published last week in the journal Cell, and another published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used mice to examine the effects of FGF21.